The companies that sued for infringement ended up settling.

Speak For Yourself, a $300 app that Apple removed from the App Store for allegedly infringing on another company's patents, will soon be reinstated. According to a blog post by one of the parents involved the lawsuit, the two companies who moved to have SFY taken down, Prentke Romich Company and Semantic Compaction Systems, have settled with the app makers behind SFY after coming to a licensing agreement. Meanwhile, children will soon be able to work with an iPad again in order to improve their speaking skills.

We wrote a feature in June of this year about the saga over the SFY app—Apple pulled the app after the two companies filed a lawsuit against the app developers for patent infringement. At the time, SFY said its business had been affected in the wait for an official court ruling and by the "Plaintiff's commercial greed," but nothing seemed to come of the company's complaints.

Now, apparently, the app is back—or soon will be (we were unable to find it on the App Store as of this writing). According to parent Dana Nieder, whose daughter Maya used the app in order to improve her own speaking skills, PRC and Semantic have agreed to license two patents to the SFY creators with the agreement that no further takedowns will be requested—SFY will return to both Apple's App Store as well as the Google Play store for Android as soon as each company can approve the apps.

"Certainly, the users of Speak for Yourself can now rest easy that the app won’t disappear from their iPads or Android tablets, and that updates to iOS won’t be incompatible with the app, rendering their voices useless," Neider wrote. "Nonverbal children (and adults) who had been waiting to download the app will be able to purchase it, opening new doors to communication."

Thanks for the follow up. One of my pet peeves is a story with an ending in the future with no easily discoverable follow up. "Where is that guy, what happened to that suit, that breakthrough- any practical results?". Some of the resolution is quite a bit ahead, I realize, but appreciated. Nature. Lover

Appears to be $199 on their website at least for android. Is the Apple version $300?(When it was on the app store)

Sure. That's the Apple Tax. /sarcasm

Makes you wonder if they're reducing the price for a while or something, yeah. I'm glad they worked it out and this can go back up soon. It's a very useful tool that many can benefit from for a reasonable price instead of the absurd multi-thousand dollar price for lesser products.

Appears to be $199 on their website at least for android. Is the Apple version $300?(When it was on the app store)

Sure. That's the Apple Tax. /sarcasm

Makes you wonder if they're reducing the price for a while or something, yeah. I'm glad they worked it out and this can go back up soon. It's a very useful tool that many can benefit from for a reasonable price instead of the absurd multi-thousand dollar price for lesser products.

Even $199 is not a reasonable price for this. I find it totally exploitative. Of course, they will charge whatever the market will bear. If the market would only bear $20 then that's what they would charge and probably make a profit, too, but because people are essentially desperate to help their kids, they can charge 10 times that. I find it kinda sick, and the fact that their competitors charge ten times again on top of that (if true) doesn't really excuse it.

Appears to be $199 on their website at least for android. Is the Apple version $300?(When it was on the app store)

Sure. That's the Apple Tax. /sarcasm

Makes you wonder if they're reducing the price for a while or something, yeah. I'm glad they worked it out and this can go back up soon. It's a very useful tool that many can benefit from for a reasonable price instead of the absurd multi-thousand dollar price for lesser products.

Even $199 is not a reasonable price for this. I find it totally exploitative. Of course, they will charge whatever the market will bear. If the market would only bear $20 then that's what they would charge and probably make a profit, too, but because people are essentially desperate to help their kids, they can charge 10 times that. I find it kinda sick, and the fact that their competitors charge ten times again on top of that (if true) doesn't really excuse it.

What makes you qualified to determine what price point covers their costs?

What makes you qualified to determine what price point covers their costs?

Nothing. What makes you qualified? I am guessing that exploitation is probably going on based on the extremely high prices. In today's market and world, that is a pretty good bet, unless you think everybody is basically honest…

By definition, their market is a relatively small subset of the general population. If 1 in 200 people are non-verbal and even have a use for this app, they'd be earning money at basically the same rate as the guys selling Angry Birds for a buck.

What makes you qualified to determine what price point covers their costs?

Nothing. What makes you qualified? I am guessing that exploitation is probably going on based on the extremely high prices. In today's market and world, that is a pretty good bet, unless you think everybody is basically honest…

Aside from serversurfer's point of a smaller market, any medical oriented device or app like this ends up having massive insurance demands, also. They have to because, at some point, they're likely to get sued and not just by patent holders or the like. I'm pretty familiar with the thought process you're using here and, frankly, it's bullshit. Nobody else who isn't the person in question knows what kind of overhead is in effect but you can be assured that it's there. Assuming exploitation simply because something is $200 is pretty bold, to be blatantly honest. Apps are not all the same, they aren't "free" to create and they aren't all created the same. You're showing your lack of knowledge regarding basic business needs and sense here.

I own and operate a small business and have for over a decade. I have heard the same line of reasoning from others before "You charge how much per hour? Wow, you don't even have to pay anyone so you pocket all that! WOW! You're rich!" Of course, this ignores such things as taxes, insurance and other overhead. It also ignores the fact that there are many unbillable hours of work that any business owner deals with for things like marketing, etc. All of that stuff gets lumped into an hourly rate which, in my case, is $100/hour. That's actually pretty cheap for my area since I keep my overhead low. Thing is, only other business owners (or some managers) really grasp that I don't just keep that whole $100 hourly rate.

In the case of a medical needs app such as the one we're discussing, neither you nor I have a clue what their financials really look like. When you consider that with the fact that it isn't an app which a significant portion of the market is going to buy, the $200 looks pretty reasonable. Even then, charging $200 or $300 instead of $5000 as most such medical devices (or apps) do is a fantastic deal. I certainly would find giving my child a voice worth a measly feww hundred dollars!

Definitely not. Filing a patent lawsuit should not give you the right to take the defendant's product off store shelves for the duration of the lawsuit, which may be years. If other stores acted like Apple did in this case, then you would never be able to buy an iPhone anywhere, because the iPhone is perpetually the target of patent lawsuits (by practicing entities). The idea that I can get my competitor's app removed from the iStore just by sending Apple a letter is incredible -- I'm sure that since it worked this time, many more developers will use this method of avoiding competition.